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‘It wasn’t fair to lumber you with it,’ Vivi muttered apologetically. ‘He’s mad but he’ll get over it.’
‘As long as he doesn’t take his ire out on your bridegroom,’ Winnie groaned.
Vivi was speeding across the dance floor to the top table when Arianna intercepted her, her pretty face anxious. ‘Do you think we can be friends again?’ she pressed.
‘I was never not friends with you,’ Vivi pointed out.
‘I listened to Raffaele and I shouldn’t have...but, you know, he’s almost always right about people...only for once he got it wrong and I got it right,’ she completed with a rueful smile. ‘I’m sorry, Vivi, that I didn’t fight to keep our friendship alive.’
‘That’s all right. We all make mistakes,’ Vivi said with greater warmth and forgiveness, her attention snatched back from the sight of her grim-faced grandfather glowering at Raffaele. ‘But we can make a fresh start now that we’re part of the same family.’
‘We’ve got so much to catch up on,’ Arianna trilled with anticipation. ‘I can’t wait to hear how you and my brother met up again. It must’ve been love at first sight for both of you.’
‘Must’ve been,’ Vivi slotted in diplomatically, watching her grandad stalk off and suspecting, by the stiff angle of Raffaele’s proud dark head, that the encounter had left him equally angry.
‘And then because Raffaele didn’t tell me about you getting married until the last possible moment, you didn’t even get a hen party!’ Arianna lamented.
‘Not much of a fan of them,’ Vivi confided, reckoning that that omission was the least of her worries.
‘Come and meet Tomas,’ Arianna urged, closing an eager hand over Vivi’s arm. ‘We’re getting married this summer.’
‘Good grief...’ Vivi said in surprise as Arianna practically dragged her in her enthusiasm across the room to meet a sandy-blond male of about Raffaele’s age, who smiled cheerfully at her and closed a fond arm round the bubbly brunette by her side.
Vivi hastened back to the top table before anyone else could divert her. The hard stamp of tension on Raffaele’s darkly good-looking face warned her that whatever her grandfather had said or done had caused offence and she blamed herself for that development entirely. After all, she was a grown woman and she had not gone into the situation with Raffaele blindfolded. She had known that her grandfather had a particularly old-fashioned outlook on young women and sex and instead of paying heed to that awareness she had blundered and failed to even cover her tracks. Now it looked as though Raffaele was expected to pay the price of her miscalculation and her grandfather’s disappointment in her.
‘What did Grandad say to you?’ Vivi asked baldly.
‘Nothing I’m prepared to repeat,’ Raffaele breathed with a raw, wrathful edge to his dark deep voice as he struggled for the first time in his life to rein back his temper.
Stam Fotakis was a cheat. Raffaele had kept his side of the bargain by marrying Vivi but Stam had refused to hand over the dossier on Arianna, arguing that Raffaele had dishonoured his granddaughter instead of treating her with respect.
All of a sudden life had become very complicated again, Raffaele acknowledged in seething frustration. He had counted on reclaiming that dossier once he had put that ring on Vivi’s finger but, evidently, Fotakis now planned to continue holding that threat over his head for months to come. Raffaele had not been prepared for that development when he’d set up a sting calculated to deprive the older man of his overweening pride in his own financial acumen. He had not realised that Vivi’s grandfather would still have the weapon of that dossier in his possession. He gritted his teeth. Well, it was too late now to change anything, and he would have to let the chips fall where they may...
‘I’m sorry,’ Vivi muttered ruefully.
‘Why should you be sorry?’ Raffaele fielded drily. ‘You haven’t done anything wrong. I was the one in the wrong.’
As the first course of the wedding breakfast was delivered, Vivi blinked. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘I’m older, more experienced. I was reckless.’
‘So was I, but don’t make a meal of it,’ Vivi advised ruefully. ‘Grandad was born and raised in another age and he will always blame the man involved for anything of that nature. But we know different.’
‘Do we?’ Shimmering dark golden eyes fringed by spiky black lashes held hers fast and her chest tightened, her mouth running dry as a slightly dizzy sensation ran through her, blurring her clarity of thought.
‘Yes, we do,’ Vivi reasoned, fighting to reclaim her brain. ‘I’m every bit as intelligent as you are and we were both equally irresponsible.’
‘I hope you’re not planning to tell our child that some day,’ Raffaele quipped.
Vivi coloured. ‘Hardly.’
Her grandfather stood up to give a short, pithy speech, forcing that uneasy dialogue to a close.
‘I saw you smiling at Arianna. That was kind of you considering how your relationship ended,’ Raffaele remarked warily over the main course.
‘I always liked your sister and I’m quite sure that you bullied her into cutting off all communication with me,’ Vivi admitted.
‘I’m not a bully. At the time I thought I was being wise on her behalf and protecting her from a malign influence.’
‘Well, you may not be a bully,’ Vivi conceded reluctantly, ‘but we both know that Arianna does exactly what you tell her to do. I can’t hold that against her.’
‘She was very attached to you. I had to be brutal,’ Raffaele revealed grudgingly.
‘I suppose you said a lot of unrepeatable stuff about me,’ Vivi surmised grimly.
Raffaele bit out a groan. ‘Let’s not rehash the past. I got it wrong and I’ve admitted it and now I’m apologising. Leave it there.’
Vivi breathed in deep and slow, wondering if she would ever be able to move past that old hurt. Why was she so sensitive where he was concerned? After all, looking back, nothing much had happened between them. She’d had a girly infatuation with him. He had kissed her, encouraged her, then misjudged her and walked away. Her own vulnerability galled her. A stronger woman, she told herself scornfully, would have long since forgotten so casual and short-lived an episode. But for Vivi, who had always fiercely guarded her heart from hurt and then mistakenly let down her barriers, a sense of pained humiliation still lingered like an old scar that hadn’t quite healed.
‘So, where do we go from here?’ she muttered rather sourly.
‘It’s simple,’ Raffaele asserted with characteristic confidence.
‘It’s anything but simple,’ Vivi contradicted tartly.
‘But it still all comes down to one baseline,’ Raffaele intoned silkily. ‘Either you want me...or you don’t.’
And with that one challenging sentence, Raffaele cut through the argumentativeness that was usually Vivi’s strongest defence and left her bereft of breath.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘BREATHE IN!’ ZOE URGED.
‘I am breathing in!’ Vivi protested, fighting to get her breath back and giving up the struggle to flop back on the side of the bed, the striped cropped jeans she had planned to wear to leave the hotel still unzipped. ‘What on earth is the matter with them? They were a perfect fit a couple of weeks ago!’
‘That tight they’d be very uncomfortable to travel in,’ Zoe pointed out gently.
Vivi gritted her teeth. ‘I can’t have put on that much extra weight already,’ she argued. ‘I’m only a few weeks pregnant.’
‘Maybe you’re one of those women who’s going to blow up into a balloon straight away,’ Zoe muttered uncertainly. ‘You should ask Winnie. She knows more than me about being pregnant.’
‘A balloon?’ Vivi repeated, aghast. ‘Thanks a bundle for that image, sis!’
‘Well, how would I know what it’s like?’ Zoe pulled an apologe
tic face.
‘What on earth am I going to wear?’ Vivi snapped, standing up and peeling off the jeans in angry frustration. ‘All my stuff was packed and sent over to Raffaele’s town house, where I thought I’d be living, but it’s now probably on its way to the airport.’
